[If] the foundation of the American polity was laid
by the Federalists, the Anti-Federalist reservations echo through American
history;
and it is in this dialogue, not merely in the Federalist
victory, that the country's principles are to be discovered.
-Herbert J. Storing,
What the Anti-Federalists Were For

In 1977, when he died far too young, Herbert J. Storing was nearing
completion of his authoritative seven volume collection of Anti-Federalist
writings, The
Complete Anti-Federalist. His former student Murray Dry took
over the task of completing the work and bringing it to publication.
This extended essay served as the Introduction to that anthology, but since
few of us are likely to plow through that work--they were the losing side
after all, so we all read The
Federalist Papers in school instead--it has been published separately.

Mr. Storing makes a series of worthwhile points about why we should
pay attention to what the Anti-Federalists had to say, both for reasons
of historical understanding, and, perhaps surprisingly, because of the
continued relevance of their arguments. As a threshold matter, it's
interesting to note, as Mr. Storing does, that the names by which we recognize
the contending sides in the constitutional debate are really backwards.
If federalism
is understood to emphasize the divided nature of power within a nation,
between states on the one hand and a central authority on the other, then
it was the Anti-Federalists who, properly speaking, favored such a division.
They were more the defenders of the power of the states. The Federalists
advocated the concentration of greater power in the hands of a central
government even at the expense of the states. Thus, when we hear
people who favor states rights today refer to themselves as Federalists
and suggest that they are merely returning to the original understanding
of the Founders, they are right and wrong, right in that they are small
"f" federalists, but wrong about the federalist position prevailing in
the Constitution. The paradox is that when the Federalists won, federalism
lost.

Some may wonder what is the use of studying the thought of the losers
in this great national debate. Mr. Storing makes the point that it
is the very nature of a political process like the one that produced the
Constitution for give and take and compromise to occur. The Anti-Federalists
may not have "won" the debate, but their ideas would still have played
an important role in shaping the final text. In much the way, a negotiation
between a Corporation and its unions may be "won" by one side, but it will
still not have gotten everything it started out demanding. Were you
to look only at the final agreement and only through the lens of one side
having "won", you could deceive yourself into believing that the agreement
was solely their product. This is obviously false but it is somewhat the
approach that has traditionally been taken to the Constitution.

Mr. Storing does a great service by restoring some sense of the importance
of Anti-Federalist thought and by placing them in the context of their
times. In so doing he even reminds us that their critique of the
Constitution remains relevant to our times. As he says :

[W]e shall also find, at the very heart of the Anti-Federal
position, a dilemma or a tension. This is the critical weakness of
Anti-Federalist
thought and at the same time its strength and even
its glory. For the Anti-Federalists could neither fully reject nor
fully accept the leading
principles of the Constitution. They were
indeed open to Hamilton's charge of trying to reconcile contradictions.
This is the element of truth
in Cecelia Kenyon's characterization of them as
men of little faith. They did not fail to see the opportunity
for American nationhood that the
Federalists seized so gloriously, but they could
not join in the grasping of it. They doubted; they held back; they
urged second thoughts.
This was not however a mere failure of will or lack
of courage. They had reasons, and the reasons have weight.
They thought--and it can not
be easily denied--that this great national opportunity
was profoundly problematical, that it could be neither grasped nor let
alone without risking
everything. The Anti-Federalists were committed
to both union and the states; to both the great American republic and the
small, self-governing
community; to both commerce and civic virtue; to
both private gain and public good. At its best, Anti-Federal thought
explores these tensions
and points to the need for any significant American
political thought to confront them; for they were not resolved by the Constitution
but are
inherent in the principles and traditions of American
life.

This tension, which he calls their "glory", made them wrong at the time
of the Founding, when it was necessary to create a nation that was strong
enough to establish itself in the world and to survive, but also may prove
to make them right in the long run. A loose-knit collection of small
republics, as they envisioned, would in all likelihood have been to weak
to endure. Indeed, they were met to write a new constitution precisely
because the Articles of Confederation had proven too feeble and unworkable.
A single, coherent, cohesive, and expansive nation-state seems to have
been the only way to settle the continent and fend off European interference.
But over the ensuing two hundred plus years we've seen the growth of the
very types of problems that they predicted, with the national government
becoming too large and too powerful and with a marked decline in the republican
virtues that they thought could only be cultivated in smaller polities.
As the Anti-Federalists had to yield at the start, to form a more perfect
union, one wonders whether we're not nearly at the point now where it will
be necessary to harken back to their ideas in order to save the Republic,
to protect liberty from the grasp of central government and to reinvigorate
an increasingly disaffected and disinterested citizenry.

If we might be excused the presumption of ending as Mr. Storing does,
with a quote from Mercy Warren :

Notwithstanding the apprehensions which have pervaded
the minds of many, America will probably long retain a greater share of
freedom
than can perhaps be found in any other part of the
civilized world. This may be more a result of her local situation,
than from her superior
policy or moderation. From the general equality
of fortune which had formerly reigned among them, it may modestly be asserted,
that most
of the inhabitants of America were too proud for
monarchy, yet too poor for nobility, and it is to be feared, too selfish
and avaricious for a
virtuous republic.

At some point the Anti-Federalists are likely to be right and the balance
will tilt so far from virtue to avarice as to threaten the Republic, unless
we heed their warning.